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How can I get teachers and staff to buy in to the RTI process?

Question: How can I get teachers and staff to buy in to the RTI process?

Evelyn Johnson: So Larry Summer’s is quoted as saying “in the history of man nobody has ever washed a rental car,” and the point of that quote is that without ownership school staff probably isn’t going to buy in, 100%, to the RTI process and without that ownership of the process they are much less likely to implement it well, and its much less likely therefore to be successful. And one way that we found to get teacher buy-in is to really ensure that all staff have an opportunity to voice their concerns about the process, to express their concerns about the changes in their roles that they make counter as a result of implementing the RTI process, and also to ensure that as schools shift from using data to make decisions about students, that the one component that is not lost is also getting the teacher’s experience and knowledge base in their personal relationship with their students; not taking that part out of the equation. In other words, we want to respect what teachers bring to this process, and if we don’t do that then you are not likely to get the level of buy-in and ownership of RTI that you probably need in order for it to work well.